Don't get me wrong. Orgasms are one of the most intensely pleasurable sensations our bodies are capable of, and when I'm doin' the dirty deed I want all parties involved to get off physically and/or mentally. Still, I find that equating sex with an orgasm is like saying that marriage means babies. Many people who have sex experience orgasms, and many people who are married have babies, but one does not necessarily lead to the other, and one's feelings of validation should not be based on the attainment of socially sanctioned ideal conclusions. When a friend tells you that she hooked up with that sexy girl from the bar last night, you'll initially assume that both of them got off on shakin' the sheets. I'm as guilty of it as anyone else.

In this city, it's expected that everyone should be able to get off with a partner, and most certainly while stroking the kitty. That puts a lot of pressure on people to come every time and make their partners moan like Samantha Jones on ecstasy. As much as we'd like to imagine hook-ups as private, we all know that on a college campus, it'll only take a week of friends chatting with friends of friends before your nighttime rendezvous become as public as your Facebook Newsfeed.

EMILY EPSTEIN

If you don't come, you'll wound your partner's ego, fail to fulfill the expectations you may have set for yourself earlier in the night, and receive pity from your group of sexually liberated city-dwelling friends. Speaking as a queer woman, I can only imagine what it must be like for a man not to come. His partner would probably feel woefully inadequate, because all it's supposed to take for a man to come is a little in-out, and any guy unable to shoot his load may feel that his masculinity is in jeopardy.

All of the consequences attached to not coming make faking it seem pretty tempting. Of course, this is likely more true of women than men, as it's much more difficult for a man biologically born with a penis to fake it. My advice to serial fakers is to stop this heinous practice. You're only perpetuating the vicious cycle of having sex that isn't getting you off and making people expect that their sex partners should be coming as hard as you're fakin' it. (You know who you are I've heard your second rate porn star impersonations through your thin-walled singles.) I'm sure everyone has heard this before, but sometimes we all need to be reminded that there's more to the mattress mambo than the 15 seconds of muscle contractions we call orgasm. Relish the other 59 minutes and 45 seconds. Let your partner know what makes you cream your panties, literally and figuratively, whether it's fucking missionary style or being smacked on the ass with a riding crop. Even if you don't come, you'll still have had good sex.

At an Ivy League institution, being able to get someone off and have mind-blowing orgasms are skills expected to be as quickly and easily learned as the proper pronunciation and usage of the term “hegemony.” In this competitive, goal-oriented environment, it's almost taboo to admit that you'll never know everything there is to know about sex and that you'll always be a lifetime learner in continuing education with new partners. But if achieving an orgasm is the end goal and signals the conclusion of sex, what room does that leave for experiencing multiple orgasms?